Dawkins fornekter Gud

Siden vi tidligere rapporterte at Richard Dawkins syntes å ha endret syn på enkelte perifere forhold som Guds eksistens, er det vel bare rett og rimelig å dementere dette.

Ihvertfall synes han selv det er rett og rimelig, i følge en som nok ikke er den fremste kandidaten til å bli hans perlevenn med det første, Melanie Phillips på hennes Specactor-blog.

Det viser seg med andre ord at Dawkins likevel ikke synes man kan lage en seriøse case for Guds eksistens, selv om han utvilsomt hevdet dette i høst.

I det hele tatt er det tydelig at Lennox sin bruk av Dawkins sitt utsagn om dette har gjort ham litt ubekvem med sin egen retorikk. Følelsen av noen som har malt seg litt opp i et hjørne er nærliggende.

There was no suggestion at all that he did not mean what he said -- that a respectable scientific case could be made for deism. And so Lennox was entirely justified in expressing astonishment. For even though Dawkins went on to say he did not agree with this case, given his previous absolutism in stating that anything unsupported by evidence is superstitious mumbo-jumbo and that anyone who believes that matter must have had an original creator is a cretin, it should therefore follow that no respectable case could possibly be made for deism.

The fact that he said he thought it could was surely a startling development. And it was very interesting that he should feel so defensive about having said it that this was the one aspect of Lennox’s comprehensive attack on him that he singled out for refutation; and that he tried to do so moreover through disreputable means, by imputing dishonesty to Lennox when it was Dawkins who was employing dubious debating tactics.

Så er jo selvsagt spørsmålet hvordan Dawkins vil kommentere at Melanie Phillips viser videre at Dawkins selv feilsiterte henne.

What remarkable sloppiness. And what arrogance. Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL, the former Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, whose website advertises ‘clear thinking’ and who poses as the indefatiguable champion of intellectual integrity, can’t even be bothered to check that he is actually quoting the person he thinks he is quoting -- even while attacking her for dishonesty. It's easy enough to muddle up similar sounding quotes on a page -- we all make mistakes -- but falsely to impute malice as a result of such a muddle, and to do so with such public fanfare, suggests a hubristic disregard for scrupulousness.*

Wait – there was worse still. For the next slide he put up, immediately after -- this time -- correctly quoting my words, read:

Lying for Jesus.

Lying for Jesus! Oh dear oh dear. Not only did Dawkins falsely accuse me of distorting his position, but he accused me of doing so because he assumed I was a Christian. Five minutes’ research maximum would have told him that I am a Jew. Either he thought that all the stuff written on Culture Watch by Bill Muehlenberg, who appears to be a devout Christian, was written by me; or he assumed that, since John Lennox is a Christian, anyone who supports John Lennox must also be a Christian. Either way, the man who has made a global reputation out of scorning anyone who makes an assumption not grounded in empirical evidence has assumed to be true something that can easily be ascertained to be totally false – thus suggesting that the mind that is so addled by prejudice it cannot deal with demonstrable reality is none other than his own.

No vert det spanande, godtfolk! Fylgj med i neste bolken.